Syracuse still going after another OT win

Jonny Flynn and the Orange survived another overtime affair on Friday night. (AP)

Hoops fatigue?

Syracuse never heard of it!

At least that's the case when it came to last night's Big East semis.

The Orangemen didn't just win the game.

They won it -- and lost it -- and won it again.

All just hours after having finished playing in the hands-down, no-doubt-about-it, most grueling of all the conference's legendary tournament games just the night before.

And it took the sixth-seeded Orange about 15 minutes by the game clock to put No.7 West Virginia -- and everyone else -- on notice that they weren't going to fold up and go away just because they'd played 70 minutes of banging, chest-to-chest energy-sucking basketball in the previous night's instant classic six-overtime 127-117 win over Uconn.

At 4 a.m. Friday morning a still revved up Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim sat in a Manhattan diner taking phone calls from friends from all over the country because he couldn't unwind enough to sleep.

A few hours later the Syracuse training staff was gerry-rigging makeshift whirlpools in hotel bathrooms to calm the aching muscles of players who had competed all those bruising minutes against the third-seeded Huskies.

And not long after those ice baths, the game was on once again.

This time Syracuse would win in a single overtime by a score of 74-69.

How?

Who knows?

"Perseverance," Andy Rautins said after knocking down four of Syracuse's 10 three-pointers. "I think the staff did a great job of getting us ready, and our guys just hung in there."

Hung in, indeed.

Syracuse, playing the same players who had gone 50 and 60 minutes the night before, went on an 11-0 run midway through the first half keyed by the three-point shooting of Eric Devendorf, and the overall offensive domination of the Orange's scrappy, jet-quick sophomore point guard Jonny Flynn.

The Orange took a 25-18 lead, and held the advantage to 36-29 at the break after Devendorf sailed in a 50-foot shot -- that's shot, not heave -- to end the half.

And when West Virginia opened the second half with a 13-2 surge to take a 42-38 lead, 'Cuse calmly scrapped right back.

Flynn, who would finish with 15 points and nine assists, engineered most of that comeback in the same way he had taken control while playing 67 minutes in the win the previous night.

Flynn drove. He kicked. He passed. And he got back on defense.

He made a three with 13 minutes left to tie the game at 45-45.

And two minutes into the overtime, Flynn drove the lane in the same way he had so many times on his way to 34 points and 11 assists against Uconn.

"The most talented point guard in the country," West Virginia coach Bob Huggins declared afterward. "He's a great, great athlete, he's got great speed, and he shoots it."

When the Mountaineers forced overtime on a pair of free throws by Devin Ebanks with four seconds remaining in regulation, it was Flynn again who took control.

He scored four of the first six points in the overtime period despite playing every second, for a total of 112 minutes in two games played within 24 hours.

"It was the toughest on Jonny," Boeheim said of the grind. "But I didn't see it in these guys, I really didn't."

Some day in the not too distant future the powers that are the Big East will come around to the general understanding that there indeed can be too much of a good thing.

That too many teams in the 16-member league wind up on the outside looking in come NCAA tournament time.

When that day comes the league will go through a divorce, with each school heading off in a direction that serves its own best interests.

The old-time orginal Big East programs like St. John's, Georgetown and Providence -- the non football schools of the conference -- will throw in together.